Soul Growth, Monadic Consciousness, and Why We Must Experience Both Good and Bad

by Robert Wilkinson

Today we take a brief look at how our Highest Self grows and why negative behaviors and experiences feed our evolutionary process.

Spiritually, we are composed of an “Upper Triad” and a “lower triad.” On the lower levels, we have a body, feelings, and a rational mind. On the Higher levels, we have a higher mind, Soul (Buddhi), and Spirit (Atman), though we don’t really “have” the latter two as much as we ARE the Upper Triad, since it’s non-dual.

Beyond these triads, we are ultimately Monadic Consciousness. I discussed more about our Spiritual Self and how it relates to our human self in a two part series I published a while ago called What is our Spiritual Self and How Does it Relate to our Human Self. When you’re done here please visit those articles, since it may help you understand why you are both Divine and human simultaneously.

Our Monad (or “Godhead”) evolves through what we call “spiritual experiences” our personality embraces that filter through the Upper Triad. From a wide angle, this can involve all kinds of experiences we wouldn’t ordinarily call “spiritual,” since just about any human experience can lead us to a higher realization about what is real and what is unreal, and how to transmute suffering into an enlightened view and response. Simply put, all our experiences can lead us to enlightenment up to a point.

I say that because our Soul-Spirit craves experience so that it may make Soul-Spirit manifest. That comes through both defeat and victory, both acceptance and renunciation. As long as an experience feeds our need for higher realization, then it’s a path to Soul growth. Once we have learned what there is to learn, then we must move on to other experiences that allow our personality to be shaped so that we have newer, greater realizations.

But often we get hung up on repeating an action, feeling, or thought simply because it feeds our senses, gives us pleasure, and is known and familiar. While this is a good thing when we are ignorant or inexperienced in those actions, feelings, and thoughts, at some point we fulfill whatever we had to learn from those, and must move on. If we cling to what once brought us pleasure after it has fulfilled its purpose in our evolution, then what once brought us pleasure sooner or later inevitably brings us pain.

I bring this up because a behavior in itself that we believe to be “bad” may not be bad under specific conditions. (That said, some behaviors are universally bad, such as those that violate another person or inflict deliberate harm on another. While we have the freedom to harm ourselves, we do not have the right to harm another.) Many human behaviors and indulgences that we think are bad actually may be relatively harmless in the larger scheme of things, as long as we learn why they are not good at some point and move on to other more productive actions, feelings, and thoughts.

In my case, I had many bad habits when I was younger. These fed a need for sensory experience, but after fulfilling those sensory indulgences for a while, inevitably my own conscience or a clear signal from Spirit showed me that it was time to give them up or suffer the consequences. That’s why a lot of behavior when we’re ignorant can be allowed, but as we grow in awareness then those behaviors become inappropriate.

As humans, we’re here to feel all the feelings there are to feel, and think whatever thoughts we need to think to understand what we need to understand. We have karmas that can only be fulfilled through acting out certain behaviors. However, in moving through these actions, feelings, and thoughts, we learn that a low thought, when seen for the illusion it is, can ultimately be the means that leads us to higher thoughts. Lower feelings, when experienced as the generators of suffering and transmuted, can be trained to be vehicles for Soul expression.

Our Highest Self desires experience across the 7 planes of our existence more (here) in order to know Itself. We need experience, if for no other reason than to spur our growth into ever-newer vehicles of Self-realization.

As long as our personality continues to grow as an effective vehicle for our Upper Triad, then we travel the evolutionary Way fairly quickly. When we get hung up on an inertia that leads to futile repetition of experience, or those things that don’t allow us to grow since we’ve already “used up” that experience, then we stagnate.

So today, please reflect on your past, and see how you’ve moved from experience to experience, behavior to behavior, attitude to attitude, living first one way, and then another. Take a new look at the unfortunate results of your prior behaviors, as well as those difficulties you went through that arose from your interaction with others. These all taught you something valuable, both in terms of your personality life as well as your ever-expanding Self-realization, since when you awakened to the fact that those difficulties were no longer tolerable, you moved into new resolve for new experience.

See how when you realized the experience had offered you all you needed to learn about acting, feeling, and thinking, in renouncing those once the experience was fulfilled, it gave you the freedom to do, feel, and think new things. Of course, these also passed away across time and experience, after which you opened to even newer, greater actions, feelings, and thoughts. These all fed your evolution up to now. You may even be able to get insights about how changing inappropriate behaviors led directly to greater forms of fulfillment.

So please take an inventory from time to time, and if you’re feeling bored, unfulfilled, or discontent, see which elements of your inner and outer life have become devoid of meaning, and are not feeding your Soul’s need for a more loving life and your Spirit’s need to express inspiration. Where there is a sense of boredom, lack of fulfillment, or chronic discontent, it shows you where a form of inertia is robbing you of your sense of freedom to explore all there is to explore across space and time that feeds your evolutionary need. Throw off the chains of mental slavery, and remember you are Eternal!

Here’s a prayer I learned long ago that seems appropriate to the moment.

From the unreal we are led to the real
From darkness we are led to light
From death we are led to immortality
May each who feels at One with Thee
Know they are therefore One with every other.

Comments

I love your post on spirituality and what the human experience is all about. They are clear and convey the point across. Good to review where we are at and what is happening within us and with the collective.
I appreciate the clarity with which you can communicate this side of life.
Thank you,
Nic

Thank you for this article Robert, and thank you for making this very important distinction when it comes to ''bad behavior'':
''(That said, some behaviors are universally bad, such as those that violate another person or inflict deliberate harm on another. While we have the freedom to harm ourselves, we do not have the right to harm another.)''

Unfortunately many blinded or mislead New Agers do not distinguish between ''destructive bad behavior'' and ''transformational bad behavior''.

They consider all ''bad behavior'' and suffering part of life, transformational and connected to a higher purpose, but not all suffering is ''God given'', lots of it is ''man made''at this time on this planet called Earth and has no higher spiritual purpose in itself.

Many corrupt souls try to blur this distinction between transformational and destructive suffering and try to make them appear as one and the same in order to keep power and control over people and situations that have no higher purpose for spiritual growth or cleansing, but only serve the purpose as a source for benefit and profits for these corrupt beings.

It is not about the natural balance of light and dark, yin and yang or night and day for them. This is about corruption or no corruption. Corruption is not interested in or part of ''The Oneness''. It operates out side of this natural web of life and love and has no problem in destroying it, even if that leads to its own ultimate destruction.

It just consumes and destroys, if it is not stopped and held in check. When we align or connect ourselves with it, even out of good intentions for oneness, love, tolerance and peace we and the world suffer through that ignorance and naivete of ours.

We can and we do have both, corrupted light and corrupted dark on this planet at this time, but ideally we want to have corruption-free light and corruption-free dark, and I think we are moving towards this authentic and natural reality and state again. Finally and fortunately.

This is thanks to people like you Robert who teach us authentic spiritual laws and practices as opposed to many other false teachers and prophets, who just see spirituality as a currently hot and trendy life style choice to lose weight, look younger, to make themselves appear to be more evolved than others or to make a quick buck. They do not understand or respect authentic spirituality, the timeless choice of a way of life that requires a responsibility for our own good behavior and means a stewardship for all other life and life forms around us, especially for the weak and defenseless ones, who also happen to most often be the most beautiful and most innocent ones.